Wet weather, Rachel Reeves pledging to crack down on tax avoidance and protesters being escorted off sight were just some of the highlights of the Labour party conference yesterday (September 24).
Getting ready for the Labour Party conference in Liverpool it struck me that there are many similarities between packing for a party conference and packing for a multi-day ultra marathon.
Comfortable shoes, obviously. Porridge for a nutritious start to the day and portable snacks to keep the energy levels up.
On this occasion I’ve left the anti-venom pump at home, although whether that was wise I’ll find out afterwards.
Financial services and growth
One of the difficulties of navigating your way around the many fringe events at conference this year is that most of them appear to be called some variant of ‘investing for growth’ as that’s very much the message the government is attempting to get across.
At the CityUK’s event we had the FCA and the Economic Secretary to the Treasury Tulip Siddiq examining how financial services can drive growth.
For the industry, a key action point was to engage with the FCA’s current call for input on what can be done to rationalise the handbook, now we’re in a consumer duty world.
The government is very keen that the FCA gets on with this because a regulatory system that is accessible, and works, is seen as key to international competitiveness. And the big set piece event will be the International Investment Summit on 14th October, when the government’s objective is to get the message across that the UK is Open For Business.
Although the same message of striving for growth was very much the same at Blackrock’s event with Spencer Livermore, a man whose job title is actually Growth Minister in addition to being Financial Secretary to the Treasury.
But if you’d been at both events you might have spotted an inconsistency between the messaging from the FCA, which says it wants to speed up consultation to get things moving, and the Treasury, which is promoting what it refers to as ‘co-design’, or getting the industry involved at an earlier stage rather than presenting policy once it’s almost finalised.
But there does seem to be a willingness to engage. I won’t tread on the toes of my colleague Tom McPhail who is covering all things pension-related at the conference, but there’s a lot of money in pensions and the government is keen to harness it, and sooner rather than later.
Chancellor’s speech
You can’t blame Rachel Reeves for gleefully opening her speech with the fact that, as promised, she delivered on becoming the first female chancellor in history.
Unfortunately some of the gloss has already rubbed off the messaging at conference from the row about unfortunate revelations about payments from party donors for clothes, although I can report that the chancellor was wearing a very nice burgundy trouser suit.
